The first time I saw the aquamarine waters of the Florida Keys at the age of 15, I felt I’d come home to a place I’d never been before. For a time, I wanted to be an oceanographer, but the social moments and movements of my youth would take me in other directions. Still, I could never fully escape the pull of the planetary tides ― nor did I want to. For years, I lived in a cliff house overlooking the Pacific, and I’ve never slept better. The pounding of the waves soothed me like a mother’s heartbeat. Bodysurfing, diving, paddling, or just wading along the shore renewed me in ways nothing else ever could. After too long away from the sea, I moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area five years ago. The second-largest estuary on the West Coast, the bay is a shallow brackish nursery for crabs, fish, shorebirds, and generations of people who love the water.